Category: coreboot

My project mostly involves to build an image with a small linux systemrunning a spice client, the system is attached  with/as a LAB tocoreboot.

What was done

My buildrom tree received some updates and small changes to the building system. The bigest problem to solve was make it build coreboot with the new [k]build system. For that I changed build rom to incorporate the coreboot options so the user can configure every aspects of coreboot – all from buildrom menus. 🙂

For prototyping I used a chroot with a debian bootstrap(debootstrap), this surely doesn`t fit well to the project but I didn`t much attention for that, I thought I could leave it for second half – in the last days talking to my mentor I realized I should have paid more attention to the image things.

With a debootstrap I hacked I small script to package copy that root to my final image, what, once again, doesn`t fit our needs and requirements and here comes the tasks to be taken in the second half.

Second half

The project has been designed to be fully installed in/loaded from flash, It`s loaded with filo(but like discussed with my mentor any other bootload would fit prefectly).

Busybox will be our base system and a x-server. To acomplish that I have to take and finish the following tasks:

• design the building strategies which involves;
  • building the busybox(well, this one is already done once we have a busybox package in buildrom system – I just need to base on that);
  • select the needed x-server componentes(modules – Xlibs, Xprogs, Xvesa);
  • select the alsa packages;
  • include the spice client and its dependencies;
• define the kernel features;
• define how filo is about to load the final image;
• define the best compression algorithm;
• integrate the whole thing to buildrom;
• alix board support;

The base building scripts will be packaged separetely and then integrated to buildrom like the other packages(i.e busybox, filo, grub and so on).

There`re just 6 weeks to the final evaluation and I`m leaving the alix board support to the last 2 weeks.

The build scripts and kernel prototyping will take the 2 first weeks, while the third one I`ll be working to put everything to be built by buildrom, the system can be tested as a proper system from an iso image till I get to integrate it to buildrom and package it as a coreboot payload.

Few weeks ago I got my alix board and today the guys from artecgroup told me my flexyICE is ready for shipping. Below are some pics I took of my alix board:

My very first task on gsoc was to make buildrom work with latest codes from coreboot, with that I changed how it used to build coreboot. First I introduced the coreboot kconfig options to buildrom so the user can configure and choose the options for coreboot in the same mainmenu as buildrom.

 
Some small changes was introduced as a consistent pattern to name the kernel mk files and the possibility to checkout source code with https:// or svn://.
Updated some packages mk files to comply some patterns I introduced.

 
I still have some changes to introduce but I think it`s already usable. I might push the final bits in the next few days whenever I get a chance to work out my patches.

Frank Vibrans from AMD pushed commits for the Fam12 and SB900 code into gerrit last week. This is just days after the official A-series release. The review has started. Feel free to help out. The gerrit links are:

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,54

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,53

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,52

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,51

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,41

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,40

I still haven’t had a good progress on my project, my first step is to work around the buildrom system.

I got to bring fully the coreboot Kconfig options to buildrom, since I don’t want to manually update it after coreboot updates I decided to write a small program to parse the coreboot Kconfig files. I found some api’s to help but I god stuck with that first task since none of them actually help me so much. A simple task became so complex and took me more time than I wanted(I started to update the api’s and change it acordingly to my needs, but well my project is not a kconfig api).

For a better and simpler solution I sat down and wrote a small shell script to run all the Kconfig’s and merge it into a single Kconfig.coreboot.

Now the next task is to change the building flow, how coreboot is fetched, patched and built.

For the final image and package I still want to get it all on the flash, I’m working on finding a solution to fit it as small as possible.

I found it would be interesting to use Kdrive to make the image smaller since it’s a minimal X server, but it’s unmaintained and we can build a thin X server from upstream.
For code sharing and analisys I setup a git repository so my mentor can comment on what I’m writing.
Now I have to move I bit faster.